


Worlds Apart, Worlds Together

by influorescence



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Gideon the Ninth Spoilers (Locked Tomb Trilogy), Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Post-Gideon the Ninth (Locked Tomb Trilogy), Trans Character, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:21:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28789368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/influorescence/pseuds/influorescence
Summary: The exquisite agony of being known.(See notes for content warning/spoiler)
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 18
Kudos: 56





	Worlds Apart, Worlds Together

When Gideon woke from death, dragged slow and unwilling back to the world of the living, her head was pillowed on something warm and not quite rigid, with a bit of give. It was rocking. Her entire body burned with the sensation of a fresh wound whose nerve endings were exposed to the air, but she did not feel broken—more like she had been recently made whole.

Her eyelids prised apart, with great reluctance, to a fog of vague color and shape. Gradually, between heavy blinks, the blur above her resolved into a face. She was on someone's lap, Gideon realized dimly, which was not rocking, but shivering: trembling with sheer force of restrained emotion. A single tear, victorious, made its way down the anguished face.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus let out a loud, wrenching sob, cradled Gideon's face in her hands, and, with agonizing tenderness, kissed her. A white-hot spike of feeling lanced through Gideon's chest, through the open gash of her freed soul, and with all of her feeble, wasted strength, Gideon kissed her back.

* * *

There were tests, of her organ function, her presence of mind; there were scribbled notes and strangers muttering and a meal not through a tube, a strangely foreign experience. Through it all, Harrow glared and breathed steam and bared her teeth at anyone who, apparently, blinked wrong. Finally, after several hours of poking and prodding, wobbly but mostly whole, Gideon was allowed to leave, gripping Harrow's hand almost as tightly as Harrow gripped hers.

* * *

That first night after Harrow rent Gideon's soul from her own, the tears in their newly singular selves still raw and throbbing with the loss, Harrow set upon her like a woman starving. She left dark marks like brands all over Gideon's body. Her golden eyes burned into Gideon's as she devoured her, hot tongue tasting at her tip and trailing along her length, memorizing her taste a hundred times over. The slick velvet of her mouth sucked her down with an intensity like she meant to consume her anew. The trailing remnants of their connection sparked and burned in Gideon's veins as she emptied herself back into Harrow, and she knocked her head hard against the wall as her knees buckled, the two of them collapsing to the floor in a tangled heap of limbs and desperation.

After Gideon brought Harrow to two sobbing climaxes, curling her fingers so hard into her that she would feel it for days, they clung to each other in a sticky mess of fluids and tears and overheated skin, and did not let go for a long, long time. Harrow mumbled nonsense into Gideon's skin, mouth moving against her breast, legs intertwined with hers, and Gideon, for once, could think of nothing to say at all.

* * *

In the following months, they barely let each other out of their sight, sticking together so closely they could have climbed back inside each other's skin. They learned to do things one-handed, clinging to each other almost without reprieve, overprotective and on edge around anyone who was not the other. Gideon could not so much as go to the bathroom without opening the door to a Harrow hovering way too close not to have heard everything and practically vibrating with anxiety. When Gideon gently needled her about this, Harrow snarked back with a sharp tongue and eyes tender as an open wound, and she did not bring it up again.

As time passed and no fresh horror arose to tear them from each other's arms, they loosened their iron grips. Gideon found herself spending up to a day without the sudden, spectral appearance of her dismal sovereign at her elbow. So passed their first year as Resurrector and Resurrected.

Lately, however, something had shifted. It was like those first months again: Harrow bugged and fussed and meddled and trailed after Gideon, or insisted that Gideon accompany her, on even the most menial of errands.

Harrow seemed unwell. Her already-angular face was pale and drawn, and once, Gideon awoke to a Harrow-shaped emptiness in their bed and the sounds of sickness coming from the bathroom. Upon being bullied by Gideon into seeking medical advice, she was unusually—even for her—tight-lipped and snappish about the state of her being. At the same time, she nagged at Gideon, watching her every move with haunted eyes.

Gideon's nerves had worried down to the quick by the time Harrow sat her down one morning, the shadows under her eyes pronounced. Her mouth twisted, and she was silent for a long moment. Finally, she spoke:

"I am with child," said Harrow softly.

Gideon's heart halted its beating.

Unaware of Gideon's sudden, second death, Harrow continued, bitterness welling up in her voice, "It is a monster; I am sure of it. It is a chimeric amalgam of two sullied halves... Its conception is unholy, unnatural. There can be nothing pure or good in its creation."

"Bit harsh for something that hasn't even been born yet." Gideon's mouth moved without the direction of her brain, which had stuck on _with child_. "I mean—you don't—"

Harrow watched her dully. Her hand had come to rest, seemingly without her noticing, on her abdomen. There was no telltale swell, yet, but she hunched around it as if hiding a great burden.

"Do you want to terminate?" Gideon asked quietly.

Harrow bit her lip. The familiar crease formed between her brows. Just as quietly, she said, "No."

"Why?”

"Because it is yours." Were her eyes damp? "Yours, and mine. Ours."

And that was it, wasn’t it: for when had they had anything that was theirs, just theirs, untouched by the interfering universe? When had they ever had something for themselves in their cruel and tumultuous lives? Been allowed the luxury of something so simple, so precious, as "ours"?

Harrow's eyes were definitely wet now. She did a lot of crying these days, as if releasing Gideon's soul had also released a blockage in her tear ducts. She cried, often into Gideon's shoulder; she laughed at even her worst jokes; she blushed and touched her without thought and, in general, showed what she would previously have considered a blasphemous range of human emotion. Even the knife's edge of her temper had dulled.

Gideon reached for Harrow's hand, the one that was not sitting low on her belly, and took it in hers. "Ours," she repeated. "Our love, Harrow. Our joy and sorrow." She pressed a hand to the center of Harrow's chest, over her rapid heartbeat, and lifted Harrow's hand to her own heart.

"We decide. Okay? No more abominations, no more monsters. No more fucking ice tombs." Harrow was rapt with attention, her tear-filled eyes fixed on Gideon's face. The radiant moon reflecting the brilliance of the sun. "Thee and me; your heart and mine. No one else."

Harrow's heart pounded under Gideon's hand. She closed her eyes, thin dams holding back the rush of tears, and whispered back, "Thee and me." Her voice was choked, the would-be serenity of her sainted face interrupted by the humanity of her emotion. Gideon kissed the delicate skin of her eyelids, pressed her lips to the veins of sacred blood in translucent skin, and held her.

Gideon and Harrow, and Harrow and Gideon. They in the universe; in each other; the universe that was each other.

Universe without end.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: pregnancy
> 
> Art and thoughts on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/jademaomi).


End file.
